About a decade or so ago, when I was still new to translating, I ran a short-lived wuxia forum called Among Rivers and Lakes. I translated several short stories for that forum, a few of which I have posted here as well (check the translation list). I also translated an interview from 2006 that I found online with wuxia/fantasy authors Cang Yue 沧月 and Jiangnan 江南.

Jiangnan, the man in the pic above, is most well known for his fantasy series Novoland《九州縹緲錄》which was adapted in 2019 as a cdrama titled Novoland: Eagle Flag starring Liu Haoran and Song Zu’er. Cang Yue started out writing such wuxia novels as Listening Snow Tower series《聽雪樓》 and Seven Nights of Snow. Her wuxia novella Turbulent Times is translated on this site. She later switched to writing fantasy and is now most well known for her Mirror series. Her work has been adaped to cdramas several times, including Listening Snow Tower, Mirror: A Tale of Twin Cities, and coming soon, The Longest Promise starring Ren Min, Xiao Zhan, and Wang Churan and adapted from her Mirror novel Zhu Yan《朱顏》. Both of thes authors are from China and are part of what is now termed the “Neo Wuxia” 新武俠 school of wuxia, a term denoted the new mainland China writers who began writing wuxia after the ban was lifted in China around 1980. It includes words written mainly in the late 90s and early 2000s, along with the rise of web novels.

The below translation is the same as when I translated it a decade or so ago, except for some spellchecking for typos.


Cang Yue: Hello everyone, it’s nice to meet you all.

Jiangnan: Hello everyone, likewise.

Host: As a graduate student in architecture, how did you get involved with writing?

Cang Yue: I feel that a person’s chosen profession and her interests don’t necessarily link up. Plus, I have a lot of interests, and of course architecture is one of them, and writing is another. But my true love is writing.

Host: Is there any connection between architectural design and writing?

Cang Yue: I feel the only connection is that they are both creative professions; they both require creativity to bring about the final product. For example, writing is that way. With writing, you create a fictional world, but with architecture you’re creating something in the real world, using reinforced concrete to build in the real world, and with writing, using words to transform a world in one’s head. It’s the same idea with both professions, but the techniques used to realize the finished world are completely different.

Host: To put it simply, you like creative professions.

Cang Yue: Yes.

Host: Jiangnan, you know Cang Yue already, right?

Jiangnan: Yes, I’ve known her for many years.

Cang Yue: We’ve known each other five or six years, and have been sworn brother and sister for three.

Jiangnan: Yeah, something like that.

Host: Jiangnan, you’re also a special case. You studied chemistry, then turned to writing. Tell us a little about that.

Jiangnan: I didn’t do well in chemistry, and felt my future prospects were a bit better with writing. Also, my body’s not too good; for a time I couldn’t go to work and do research, so I wrote books.

Host: An illness caused by your work in chemistry?

Jiangnan: No, it’s congenital; my heart is not too good.

Host: Did you eventually continue your Ph.D studies?

Jiangnan: Yes, I persisted, and in the end finished it.

Host: Cang Yue, I want to ask you: what was your motivation for writing Seven Nights of Snow?

Cang Yue: Seven Nights of Snow originated from a scene with a character drinking wine under a plum tree, and from that was developed into a story. I wanted to write a warm story with a cold setting.

Host: So you started with a single scene and gradually expanded it until it became an entire story?

Cang Yue: Right.

Host: The wine I’m particularly interested in; what is it called?

Cang Yue: It’s a fictional wine I made up, called “Laughing at the World”.

Host: Like the song?

Cang Yue: Yes. I really like that song. Every time I go to KTV I have to sing that song. When I was coming up with a name for the wine, I immediately thought of that song.

Host: That was your first full-length novel, right?

Cang Yue: It was my first full-length wuxia novel. At first, I could only write twenty or thirty thousand characters, because my control was only that good. If I wrote longer, the story would get away from me, in regards to the length and the structure of the piece. But like hand-pulled noodles gradually lengthened, I could eventually write fifty or sixty thousand characters. Then, little by little, until I wrote Defeated Army. By then I could write 120,000 characters. Then to Seven Nights of Snow, when I felt I had a firm grasp on things, I could write probably 180-190,000 characters, and by then it was beginning to look like a whole bowl of hand-pulled noodles.

Host: I feel like you’re the same as a martial arts expert. From the start you could only write thirty or forty thousand characters, like a little xia, but you gradually turned into a big xia, the process of writing kind of like practicing martial arts.

Cang Yue: It’s somewhat alike. Practicing martial arts is hard work, and writing is also hard work, but I feel that writing doesn’t give me quite the feeling you’re describing, because the process of writing is enjoyable. You gradually feel your control increasing, and then you can create more works and expand your abilities. So I don’t feel the process is laborious.

Host: Jiangnan, what’s your take on it?

Jiangnan: I’ve always read Cang Yue’s books, even the ones she wrote when she was young.

Host: You shouldn’t say young.

Jiangnan: Before she graduated is pretty young.

Host: A little over 20.

Jiangnan: Yeah, about 20 or so. I feel her style of writing is very firm and straightforward, her basic style always furthering female wuxia, the scope of her fictional worlds expanding bigger and bigger. She’s a magnificent writer. Her style of writing is very beautiful, with a poetic flavor. Seven Nights of Snow shows how her writing has matured, and her is her finest achievement.

Host: Jiangnan, I bet that when you started writing, you wrote novels, right?

Jiangnan: No.

Cang Yue: Novellas and short stories.

Jiangnan: I started out writing a novel, but before I had finished I turned to shorter works. Later I took out the novel and continued writing. I’ve written many novels I haven’t finished.

Cang Yue: Always digging holes.

Host: So you two didn’t start out the same, Cang Yue starting with short stories and progressing to longer works, and you starting with longer works, then switching to shorter works before going back to longer works. Is that right?

Jiangnan: Yes, because I don’t have a girl’s persistence and patience. I could maybe write eagerly and finish a novel very quickly, but when I don’t feel like writing, I could go half a year without writing at all.

Host: Is Seven Nights of Snow a wuxia story or a romance story?

Cang Yue: Actually, in the end, it’s just a story with a lot of different elements incorporated within. It could have wuxia, romance, even a trace of manga; it’s all there.

Host: Tell us a little bit about this trace of manga.

Cang Yue: Take Miao Feng, for example. Miao Feng has blue hair. Of course, I gave him a reason for having blue hair; it was because of poisoning that his hair turned blue. You see that a lot in manga and anime. There are a lot of different elements in there because I like them. I like that romance, manga, and wuxia can all give rise to a sympathetic reaction from the reader. So, you can say it’s just a story; a clear demarcation of genre is hard to get at.

Host: Why did you choose a female main character like the herb valley master, like in Heavenly Sword and Dragon Saber, someone kind of off-the-wall like that?

Cang Yue: You mean like Hu Qingniu?

Host: Yeah. You don’t think there’s a close resemblance? He even has some baffling rules.

Cang Yue: Generally speaking, those with literary or artistic talent are all a bit different, or have unusual idiosyncrasies.

Host: Paranoia?

Cang Yue: Nothing that serious. But everyone has their own principles they have established for themselves, their own characteristics in regards to some outstanding ability, or maybe an aspect of their disposition shows through particularly more than others. Xue Ziye is that way. When I started, I wanted to write a female doctor who is greedy and lustful, in order to break with the usual depictions of physicians. Of course, she is still fundamentally good. I didn’t completely change her character. The reason I chose a female point of view is very simple: I simply can’t write from a male perspective.

Host: Really?

Cang Yue: Really.

Host: As a woman, you still need to further your skill?

Cang Yue: No. It’s just that, I feel every writer, me included, can only see the world from his/her own perspective. That’s the way I look at it anyway. I’m capable of seeing describing the jianghu from a woman’s eyes. So, if you want me to change perspectives, for example if you asked me to imagine what the jianghu is like from a Wei Xiaobao perspective, I couldn’t write something like The Deer and the Cauldron. Writing Seven Nights of Snow was a very natural process. I looked at the jianghu from a female’s perspective, and also she is an onlooker. From beginning to end, she is never drawn into the real world of the the jianghu. From her point of view I look at what the jianghu is like, what the disputes are like, what the men are like. That’s how I wrote it.

Host: Jiangnan, in your eyes, what is the jianghu like? From a male perspective.

Jiangnan: The jianghu of the wuxia novel is a microcosm of society, the different sects representing different forces, the big xia representing different forces among the outstanding characters, the big uninhibited, wandering xia representing the smashing of society’s rules, characters who don’t follow convention. By displaying some elements of society on a simple stage, everyone can easily understand the message, and everyone is happy to understand these feelings from a fictional setting.

Host: So, in fact it’s a microcosm.

Jiangnan: Yes, a microcosm.

Host: Have you read Cang Yue’s Seven Nights of Snow?

Jiangnan: I’ve only obtained a sample, only read half, but I feel it’s a magnificent work with a very clear style, very poetic, including the character Xue Ziye.

Host: Are there any leading male characters?

Cang Yue: There are three male leads, one named Huo Zhanbai, one named Tong, and the other is named Miao Feng.

Host: What’s the secret to naming your characters?

Cang Yue: No secret. Whenever I’m reading a book or newspaper and I see an interesting name I just write it down. I have a box of notes, like a silk bag, full of names. When I need a name, I empty it out and look through it. I come up with all my character names that way.

Host: The names in wuxia novels are especially important. In Jin Yong’s wuxia novels, he often gives his characters names with a deeper meaning. Do you do this as well?

Cang Yue: Some, but to a certain degree the names aren’t especially important. Like, “Xiao Feng” and “Guo Jing”. Those names are more ordinary, but the characters’ personalities are brought out in accordance with their names. Like Xiao Feng, the personality and name match up completely, and “Wei Xiaobao”, which is also a common name.

Host: How does this work surpass your earlier work? Is there anything that particularly sets it apart?

Cang Yue: Well, it’s longer.

Host: That’s pretty easy to see.

Cang Yue: The scope of the novel is larger, with up to twenty to thirty characters described at once, with about seven or eight main characters. Another big difference is the structure of the novel. I tried to use a structure I haven’t used before, for instance, using elements from film, where three threads of the story advance together. I switch between three different storylines, then let the reader see them from an onlooker’s perspective, bring two threads together at the same time and advancing them simultaneously. Actually, it’s a little bit like the chapter in Dream of the Red Chamber, “Xue Baochai Leaves the Women’s Quarters to Perform the Great Rite”. Because I know that some of Gao E’s continuation of the last forty chapters of that novel are not quite satisfactory, but he handled the climax well, taking two settings, the Xiaoxiang Pavilion and the Yihong Courtyard and advancing them together, contrasting the happiness of one with the sorrow of the other very powerfully. I thought I would study that technique, taking two threads and weaving them together, advancing two storylines at once.

Host: Since you just made the comparison, tell us a little about how you handled your climaxes.

Cang Yue: The climax needs to be dealt with coldly. The descriptions need to be calm. The outpouring of emotion and the plot are already at their most intense level. At that point, you often write with your own emotions in order to stir the reader. When the story is at its highest point, the writer must be able to keep control, must narrate soberly, and every description must hit the mark exactly. But everything we communicate we want to let the reader be affected by. We want the reader the feel pained. We want to let the reader feel excited.

Host: I feel you’re very cruel, always wanting to stir up the reader’s tear ducts. While you’re calm and sober, the readers are in tears.

Cang Yue: If a writer is too influenced by her own emotions, the end result won’t be good.

Host: We can see your creative thought process. Your writing is no longer confined to the internet and magazines as your popularity spreads. It’s possible you still have a literary masterpiece in you. What do you think?

Cang Yue: I wouldn’t dare talk about literary masterpieces, because that’s a long ways off. But, I do hope to write deep, moving, visually exciting works. I want to write about all that I’ve come to realize these past few years. Because in the five or size years I’ve been writing, a lot has changed, and I want to pass on those experiences to the reader. I feel that, whether it comes out from the internet, or magazines, or from regular training, it doesn’t make much of a difference. Right now, our group of writers are in a kind of fierce competition, and readers are better able to sift through and select, not like the way it was before. [The regularly published writers] are like Whampoa Military Academy graduates, and we’re like gladiators fighting to kill each other (laughs).

Host: Jiangnan is also originally gladiator from the internet, now considered to be an army regular. What do you think about the internet literary world and the traditional literary world?

Jiangnan: I don’t know how to define it. I feel that internet literature could be pretty complicated to define. Up to now there hasn’t really been an authority who has come out on the subject. I feel that kind of criticism will be up to the present bestsellers, such as Guo Jingming, Cang Yue, and including a lot of writers who matured and published from the internet. These two groups could be traditional literary teachers with followers, or could be a group of teachers with a group of followers, gradually progressing, beginning their learning with different techniques and methods. And internet writers rely on their natural talent or their personalities to gain support, always honing his own path. It’s a lot to choose from, it’s a massive process, a lot of authors and a lot of readers, and eventually the good works will be filtered out, and these will be considered the new standards.

Host: So, out of a mass of writers and a mass of readers, the best works will be filtered out?

Jiangnan: Yes.

Host: You depict Xue Ziye to be just short of perfect: she’s beautiful, full of wit and talent, she’s good and kind, strong, loyal and steadfast…is this your ideal woman?

Cang Yue: She also has a lot of shortcomings, for example her lustful nature, her greed. I imagine she would not be big on doing housework.

Host: Why did you make her lustful?

Cang Yue: A lot of woman are lustful, at least I think so. I guess I must be too (laughs).

Host: It’s all out in the open.

Cang Yue: It’s just a woman’s nature. There’s nothing to hide.

Host: But there was something in the book I found particularly good. When Zhanbai face the sick person, he wasn’t particularly wealthy, he just grow to be really handsome. Out of the three main male characters, who is your favorite?

Cang Yue: Actually, I feel they all serve different functions. Miao Feng would make the best husband, Tong is like your little brother, or maybe your sworn brother, the one you use your maternal instincts to look after. Ya Mi is your friend, someone you can pour your heart out to, very quiet. These three represent three different things. As a woman, of course I want all three.

Host: That’s very greedy.

Cang Yue: Everyone is greedy.

Host: Every girl has some narcissism. Do you agree?

Cang Yue: Probably, though some suffer from low self-esteem.

Host: You’ve said you tend towards narcissism.

Cang Yue: I feel every writer is a little bit narcissistic.

Host: Jiangnan, are you narcissistic?

Jiangnan: I don’t think so.

Cang Yue: I think he is.

Host: Is Ziye from Seven Nights of Snow a reflection of your narcissism?

Cang Yue: I hope to be like her. You hope to be like that kind of person, but in reality there are some differences. It’s just something you look up to or long for. You admire that kind of woman. You hope to describe that kind of person so others will know.

Host: Do you think that if you work hard you can attain her level?

Cang Yue: I feel her state is a bit miserable, so forget it (laughs).

Host: You have a loyal following, which goes by the name of “Worship the Moon Disciples”.

Cang Yue: That’s from my early novel, Listening to Snow Pavilion, in which there is a “Moon Worship Sect”, but at that time, I hadn’t yet taken the pen name Cang Yue, because I wrote that novel in middle school, and at that time I hadn’t ever used a pen name. I wrote in my workbook in those days, and after I used that name, they felt it would be a fitting name for a fan group, so they called it that.

Host: Like “corn”, everyone likes to use this kind of name.

Cang Yue: Yes. All of us on the forum would think up a lot of names and which to use. “Moon Fan” didn’t sound good. Then someone proposed “Moon Cake”, which was even worse. Then “Worship the Moon Disciples” was settled on.

Host: If you could say something to all your fans and forum-mates, what would you say?

Cang Yue: Of course I would say “thank you”, because when I started publishing on the internet, my first readers were from there, and they continued to support me as my readership grew. Without them, maybe I would never have gone anywhere, and I wouldn’t have all the readers I have today. And I know a lot of readers have been there since around 2001, and have stuck with me for five or six years. Sometimes I reply to them and chat about these past five or six years, their perspective reading my novels; it’s very enlightening. They give me a lot of suggestions, an outside perspective, and it’s helped me improve a lot. So I regard them as teachers, and also as friends.

Host: You just said you used to write in your workbook.

Cang Yue: That was when I first started.

Host: Did you do that too, Jiangnan?

Jiangnan: I wrote in notebooks.

Host: Would you suddenly want to write while in the middle of a chemistry experiment?

Jiangnan: When watching the machines work, or when close to a computer, I would use the computer to write.

Host: When you were in the chemistry lab and suddenly had the urge to write, what did you do? Write while holding a test tube?

Jiangnan: It’s just like when you haven’t eaten: you just have to endure it for a while, and then you can eat (laughs).

Host: But for a writer, sometimes if you have to wait, your inspiration might slip away.

Cang Yue: Sometimes, but it’s pretty rare.

Host: Because writers have good memories?

Jiangnan: Not everyone. For some, when inspiration strikes, if they don’t write it down, they forget it.

Host: Cang Yue, What do you think about love? You once said that “With love, you need to have a way of eliminating people.”. You said that, right?

Cang Yue: Seems like I said that.

Host: So if there are too many outstanding guys around you, you can’t choose, so you use a ruthless method of elimination?

Cang Yue: No, because I feel a person finds it difficult to be straightforward, and hit the mark about what kind of person she needs, or what kind of person she is suitable for, you have to wait until you meet that person to know if he is suitable. So, I feel it’s that kind of method of elimination: you meet and then you can think if that person is suitable or not, and if not, they’re eliminated, and you meet the next one. That’s what you need to do.

Host: Is the love in your novels the kind of love you yearn for?

Cang Yue: Yearning is yearning, but I hope it doesn’t happen to me (laughs).

Host: Because it’s tragic?

Cang Yue: Yes, I especially like describing tragic emotions, but sometimes I write about more happy things too.

For example, Sword Brother and Jade City–these are happier. In fact, I can’t write deep tragedies. I prefer drama, a bit of tragedy in the happiness, some happiness in the tragedy, but I generally write stories that have tragedy in the midst of joy, not joy in the midst of tragedy.

Host: More realistic.

Cang Yue: Because life doesn’t have such perfect, happy endings.

Host: And it’s not so tragic.

Cang Yue: Because if I write so melodramatically, I too would have difficulty believing it myself. So, I like to write something that will convince the reader.

Host: Seven Nights of Snow is a tragedy. On the cover is a sentence that seems to be from the most tragic part of the novel. Can you tell us a little about what that sentence means?

Cang Yue: At the climax of the novel, the male and female main characters meet, but they brush past each other, followed by their final farewell.

Host: Why do they always just brush past each other? Do they forget?

Cang Yue: Because of this fortunate arrangement, it’s very natural for fate to lead them to this point, **only if Heaven wills it can they really meet. Otherwise, they just brush past each other. When I painstakingly arranged this, except for the drinking under the plum tree scene, this scene left me with the deepest impression of bitter sorrow, because at first I want to let the reader feel happy and satisfied, let them feel that life should be this way, that love should be this way, then when we get to that scene, let the reader feel pained, but that pain is not some kind of catharsis or crying outburst, but a constrained pain, held in, so that when the main characters brush past each other the reader’s hear will be ripped out at that moment. I feel tragedy is like this, first you set up a really good situation, then you rip it open and let the reader see.

Host: Sounds like something a famous person said.

Cang Yue: Yes, something a famous person said, for example, you raise a pig, fatten it up, then slaughter it. Usually when I write main characters, I do it this way. I want to write him well, fully develop the character, so that others like him, then take a knife and butcher him.

Host: Let me sum up: You develop your main character into a real flesh and blood person, then butcher him.

Cang Yue: Some people say I treat my characters in the same manner as one treats one’s stepmother.

Host: Jiangnan, do you write tragedies?

Cang Yue: He often writes tragedies.

Jiangnan: Quite a few tragedies.

Host: But I think your first work wasn’t a tragedy.

Jiangnan: That first work I don’t remember too clearly, but I write more tragedy than comedy. Comedy is difficult to write. Comedy writing is not like laughing and joking, but the meaning is also clear, very difficult to command. Actually, every sad person just likes to impale himself onto the cow’s horn, and when sad can be pure and simple, but when happy is very chaotic, so comedy is more difficult to write than tragedy. Those who write comedies are masters. To write tragedy you only need to have good techniques and methods, so I generally write tragedies.

Host: Tragedies are like stories involving car accidents or terminal illnesses, things like that.

Cang Yue: Right.

Host: I want to gossip for a minute. Cang Yue, your book covers are different from your earlier covers. Your fan group say they’re all good. What do you think?

Cang Yue: I score them in several stages. The earliest have a heavier manga influence than later ones, but they still have a feminine aesthetic. I really like the look of my current books. Before I had a reader who was a lawyer. He saw the Seven Nights of Snow cover and was especially happy, because he could finally take a book into his office to read. My earlier books he said he would hide in his home and read in secret. If his co-workers saw him reading it they would day ‘how old are you to read comics meant for young girls?’ So, with this book the style changes, and I believe that readers will like it as well. Because, five or six years on, I have matured, and my readers have also matured, and can accept more mature or high level things.

Host: Let’s leave the covers aside and talk about the content. Which of your works do you like the most?

Cang Yue: That’s very hard to say, because each book represents a different time in your life. For example, the Listening to Snow Pavilion series recalls my life during middle school. The Mirror series was from between third year of university and graduate school, and Seven Nights of Snow reflects my current mindset. I feel that a narcissistic person such as myself likes all of her works from each period in her life.

Host: Likes all of your works from each time period?

Cang Yue: Yes, so it’s very hard to say which part of my life–is the young you better, or is the university student you better?

Host: You’ve reached the limit of your narcissism.

Cang Yue: Yes, no matter what I love myself (laughs).

Host: Jiangnan, what about you?

Jiangnan: I don’t know.

Host: Do you feel an author might be particularly fond of a certain work?

Jiangnan: I don’t have such a feeling now. I still keep writing new works. Because if I only like one kind of work, maybe I will stick with the same style for a long time, and if that situation occurs, maybe I will write the same kind of book for a while, and then I might have a favorite. And some writers are always doing something new and don’t have a particular favorite and have other kinds of works.

Cang Yue: He gives himself “potholing” as an excuse: you’ve not finished digging one hole, and you think of starting on another.

Jiangnan: Everyone rejects their past and can’t bear to write off their future. Everyone has something in their past they don’t like, but the future is brimming with hope.

Host: So, to sum up: you always like the next book.

Jiangnan: Always like the next one, which is not a good way to think about girls (laughs).

Host: Today we can also talk about the whole trend of wuxia, and what direction it will take in the future. You two both write wuxia, so please let’s have both of your opinions on the subject.

Cang Yue: I’m so afraid to talk such a big topic. Because I’ve always felt that the future trends of wuxia is something I can’t control. I just write to the best of my abilities and account for myself.

Host: Shape your own style the best you can.

Cang Yue: Yes, but this may not have much to do with chivalry, I just feel that I write what I want to write. My writings now have a basic platform, and that is giving priority to wuxia, since wuxia gives me inspiration. Like the structure of the jianghu in Seven Nights of Snow, the structure all comes from the setup that Jin Yong originally created, such as the model of having the Central Plains and the Western Regions against each other. If you want to talk about the inner core, like plum blossoms and strong liquor, that’s a little bit from Gu Long. And my works contain my own influence, and there might be other influences in there as well. If you want to talk about what will happen in the future, it could be using wuxia as a base and then incorporating other elements into it to the point where it no longer resembles wuxia, or at least no longer conforms to the idea of wuxia that most of us have. I think that a lot of people that don’t normally read wuxia maybe read my works, but it might not be because of the wuxia elements; it might just be because it’s a story, so they read it.

Jiangnan: I have a lot of wuxia influences. People my age, and maybe a little bit younger, are strongly influenced by wuxia. Basically, everyone reads wuxia.

Concerning the style of my works, and wuxia’s influence on it, I think wuxia is not necessarily the biggest. My father especially likes to translate novels, for example, foreign writers. But wuxia is something innate, something very close to the Chinese language. For example, one-on-one battles. If it’s not wuxia, if it’s a Western style battle, the rhythm of the fight is very different. Wuxia has a lot of schools: Jin Yong and Gu Long’s styles are different. Wuxia has a drawback, and that is that it has matured too much, to such an extant that all the possibilities are cut off. Wuxia has already established a society similar to modern times, such as the conflict between the Central Plains and the Western Regions, it’s already matured. That’s why Hong Kong and Taiwan writers haven’t expanded on it. But, wuxia does have some breakthroughs, the principal one being the emotions and description techniques, which in the end is that of modern people. Romance and emotion description is much more prevalent now, and though there are still some older concepts that are no longer common in real life, such as patriotic loyalty. But even though patriotism may still be present, loyalty and the student-teacher relationship is less common now, because the model of love and affection of contemporary times is not the same as it used to be. In addition, descriptive techniques have advanced, no longer using the kind of language used in story prompt books, and is more like a movie scene.

Host: Equivalent to a script.

Jiangnan: And not like the masters write, where two people would leave the city and buy some beef, two flowers blooming, each on a branch. It’s more groundbreaking and improved.

Host: You spent six years writing the Mirror series, and the Listening to Snow Pavilion series altogether took six years. What are you looking forward to in the future?

Cang Yue: In these six years, my style of writing has grown and developed, the sequence of ideas clear, section by section changing. I actually feel my writings are pretty standard. I always know the structure and how to build it up and create it so that it won’t collapse. The structure must be reasonable, and the space should be arranged skillfully. These past two years, I’ve already published a lot, everything I have written up to this point.

Host: You actually wrote for six years?

Cang Yue: More than six years, more like ten years. Maybe by next year the market will be different and I will publish less, because I maybe will just write a book and then publish it, my rate of publishing reduced, and the time between each book may increase, but the quality of the writing might be better than before.

Host: It’s all top-quality.

Cang Yue: Yes, but future books will be even better. I’ve already arranged what I plan to write next year.

Host: Tell us about it.

Cang Yue: Next year we might see a new collection of my previous works published, because the contracts on the old manga-like covers will be up, so we might see some new covers as part of a collector’s edition. Later I might also try a new writing style, and collaborate with Jiangnan. When we collaborate next year, you may see my writing style change significantly because we settled on a style together, down to the characters, which was not possible before.

Host: Jiangnan, can you tell us more about this collaboration?

Jiangnan: Before we had talked much about it, we had talked about each of us writing a story together, and it was a very simple concept. We felt two people writing a story would be more interesting than just one, one person writing would be especially boring.

Host: Need two people interacting.

Jiangnan: Yes. I’m also in charge of a magazine, and one magazine already has a contract with Cang Yue on a long manuscript, so right now Cang Yue’s publisher is particularly busy, the publisher is waiting for the manuscript, and a lot of others waiting as well, so we haven’t had a chance to collaborate before now. But, perhaps next year we can publish something, and it will have a special topic, very large-scale, maybe a literary theme, or made-up history, maybe a fantastical aspect of history, each of us writing a different thread of the story that takes place simultaneously, with the same political forces, and conflict within the same country. Each book is a standalone, and you can read them separate or together, like a puzzle, that kind of story.

At first we thought to each write a novella and put that together into one book. After talking about it some more, we discovered the framework of this story was exceedingly splendid and vast in scope, too big to fit into a novella, so we adjusted our strategy and now we’re planning to each write a novel.

Host: No, I think it’s because you want to make more money selling more books.

Cang Yue: No, no. If we confined the story to a novella, we wouldn’t have to leave out so many wonderful things.

Host: I’m just joking.

Jiangnan: Originally we had set aside three months to finish writing, but later we found out that wouldn’t be enough time. Because a lot of times in the outline you think it will only take 40,000 characters, but it ends up taking 100,000 characters.

Cang Yue: That’s the hand-pulled noodles effect. The more you pull, the longer they get.

Host: Also, during the process of writing you may encounter new ideas and have to get rid of old ideas.

Cang Yue: You also have to consider your control, whether or not you can manage the book.

Host: About when do you plan to publish this book?

Cang Yue: It’s kind of up in the air right now, but it should be sometime late next year.

Jiangnan: We hope to have it out sometime around July or August.

Host: Now let’s turn to some questions from the internet.

Internet: Which of your female leads is more like you?

Cang Yue: Possibly every character contains some aspect of my personality, and I may take some aspect of my personality and enlarge it and mix it with someone else’s personality. For example, when I was young, I was more like Ah Jing. At that time, I was very stubborn, going to the extreme in everything. As I got older, that sharp edge was gradually erased, but who was I more like then? I can’t really think of an example. Later on I hope that when I reach thirty I will be more like Xue Ziye.

Host: In the book, how old is Xue Ziye?

Cang Yue: 28 or 29. I have another year or two to catch up.

Host: I know, you said your female characters contain a trace of you.

Cang Yue: There’s a trace, but are by no means me.

Host: You now are a greedy, lustful Xue Ziye. Aside from writing, have you have any other professions?

Cang Yue: Of course. I should really say that in addition to working, I also write. Because I work as an architectural designer, designing blueprints and drawing sketches, every day I use Photoshop, working a lot on the computer, putting together how to construct a house, what the inner space is like, what the outer structure is like, work like that. Only after work, after 10 o’clock, do I become Cang Yue.

Host: So you have two identities; you open Word and use Word to build a structure.

Cang Yue: Yes.

Host: Jiangnan, what do you do right now?

Jiangnan: I don’t have as much time to write as Cang Yue, though I write more than her, I hope to have as much time to write as she does, but still publish more books. Last July I finished my dissertation, but right now my body is not too good, and when I was in the US my mind wasn’t too well either, so I had a bit of a delay. After I returning from the US, I invested in a company and went to work there, where I work mainly in media, including publishing a magazine and working with cable TV, and that consumes a lot of my time. Fortunately, our company has editors who urge me on, and when they do that, I just stay home and write.

Host: They dare to rush the manuscript?

Jiangnan: They dare, outside my door knocking.

Host: They ought to act more like your subordinates.

Jiangnan: They’re brave.

Cang Yue: One time they locked him up in a guesthouse and wouldn’t let him go, and they gave him a computer and made him write, then had him copy it onto a USB stick.

Host: Cang Yue, how do you know about that?

Cang Yue: Everyone knows about it, it’s a very embarrassing thing.

Jiangnan: At that time, one of the editors came and made me write, and when I was finished, copied it onto a USB stick and left.

Host: And Cang Yue?

Cang Yue: I’m very diligent, making my readers happier than his, because his readers sometimes feel despair, including me, as I’m one of his readers, always pressuring him to finish.

Jiangnan: Cang Yue is a good girl. Every time you ask her what she’s doing, she says she’s writing. Her life is very regulated, a good girl’s personality.

Cang Yue: Sometimes I force him, telling him that if he doesn’t finish it, then I’m going to finish it.

Host: That sentence is too classic.

Jiangnan: We have a good personal relationship.

Internet: It seems like you two are friends. Can you say something about how you two met, and how you write together? What is the process like?

Cang Yue: We met online, about the time he was in the US studying for his Ph.D., and I was a graduate student at Zhejiang University.

Jiangnan: So you were still in school?.

Cang Yue: Yes, I was still in school.

Host: So you were friends on the internet?

Jiangnan: Yes. At that time there was a very popular forum–Qingyun Shuyuan. Later a bunch of writers would appear from there, and we both frequented the site and flattered each other there for a long time.

Host: Yes, I’ve heard some of that today.

Jiangnan: Yes, we’ve been flattering each other for five or six years.

Cang Yue: He was there before I was. When I joined, he had already made a name for himself. I would always post comments urging him on with his manuscript, always sticking behind him, but he never paid any attention to me. Later I felt I was boring, and I felt that since he was ignoring me, I would just write myself, so I began writing, and when I started writing, he started paying attention to me.

Jiangnan: It stemmed from mutual sympathy between two writers, like how two bears know each other, that kind of feeling.

Host: This must give internet writers inspiration and encouragement.

Cang Yue: When we go back, everyone will be writing.

Jiangnan: Yes, next year we’ll pull from them to help work on our special project.

Host: Well, that’s about all the time we have. You two can greet the online fans. We’ll end today’s discussion here.

Cang Yue: Greetings everyone, we’re stopping here, so goodbye. I hope next time we can meet in the jianghu. Thank you all for your support.

Jiangnan: I think you won’t have to wait too long, if I write on schedule. Thanks everyone, thanks for all your support.

THE END

Source: http://book.sina.com.cn/author/subject/2006-11-20/1518206362.shtml